Yves here. This piece in so many ways exemplifies what is wrong with the media and elite punditry today. Too many of those whose economic interests or emotional affinities like with the PMC/mainstream media world view insistently seek to discredit those on the right as deplorable, bigoted, uneducated, somewhat more politely, populist, you name it. Similarly their media figures can’t be engaged in any good faith arguments. They must be conspiracy theorists, even though they are on the right side of some of their important issues, like Russiagate being bogus and the Hunter Biden laptop being bona fide. Admittedly Trump now looks to be selling them out another legitimate cause, of being against US nation-breaking, which has been smeared as Putin propaganda.
So here is another broad trope to try to discredit the right, that’s it made up as you go along, and resembles improv, a type of comedy performance. Funny how Trump’s trolling, of making fries at a McDonalds to one-up Harris’ humble beginnings posturing, is omitted. And his iconic response to the assassination attempt is entirely out of paradigm.
No, we are supposed to show complete respect for official and embarrassing howlers, like Russia is running out of weapons and has a lousy, no good military, or that the Gaza genocide is somehow warranted, or that everyone who objects to it, even Jews, is anti-semitic.
I could and maybe even should say a lot more, but feels like shooting a mouse with an elephant gun. Plus it would undermine reader creativity in subjecting this line of thinking to well-deserved ridicule.
I have taken some improv classes. I was terrible at it because you are supposed to take any silly or potentially silly idea from your scene partner and exaggerate. I could not do silly. My reflex was to argue. I suppose if I had tried to follow along, I would have burst out laughing.
This is a classic in that genre:
By Danielle Lee Tomson, Research Manager, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington and Kate Starbird, Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington. Originally published at The Conversation
If you’ve ever wondered how the right-wing media ecosystem operates and why it’s effective, try viewing it as a form of improvisational theater or improv.
In the wake of the 2024 U.S. elections, everyday people and political pundits alike have been trying to make sense of the results and the related observation that many Americans seem to be experiencing very different realities. These realities are shaped by very different media ecosystems.
Democrats tend to trust institutional media and network news more than Republicans. In contrast, Republicans have developed what they see as a more trustworthy and explicitly partisan alternative media ecosystem that has rapidly evolved and flourished in the internet era.
Cultivating robust alternative media has been a political strategy of the right for decades. Given the interactive nature of social media and ongoing investments by the right in digital media, the right-wing media ecosystem has become a highly participatory space filled with influencers, political elites and audiences.
These players engage in year-round conversations that inspire and adapt political messaging. The collaborations are not tightly scripted but improvised, facilitated by the interactivity of digital media.
For all these reasons, we, as researchers of information ecosystems and influencer culture, find it useful to think of right-wing media as a kind of improv theater. This metaphor helps us understand the social and digital structure, culture and persuasive power of right-wing influence, which is reshaping politics in the U.S. and around the world.
Elements of Improv in Right-Wing Media
Influencers are the performers in this real-life improv show that plays out on a stage of social media newsfeeds, podcasts, cable newsrooms and partisan online media outlets. The performers include political pundits and media personalities as well as a dynamic group of online opinion leaders who often ascend from the audience to the stage, in part by recognizing and exploiting the dynamics of digital media.
These influencers work together, performing a variety of roles based on a set of informal rules and performance conventions: sharing vague but emotionally resonant memes, “just asking questions” to each other, trolling a journalist, “evidencing” claims with data or photos – sometimes taken out of context – all the while engaging each other’s content.
Just as in improv, performers work daily to find a game from their audience, internet forums and each other. The “game” in improv is a concept or story with a novel element around which a performance revolves. Once a compelling game is found, performers “raise the stakes,” another improv concept where the plot intensifies and expands.
Performers follow a loose script, collaborating toward a shared goal. Digital media environments provide additional infrastructure — the platform features, networks and algorithms — that shapes the performances.
Their performances, both individual and in interaction with each other, help influencers attract and curate an audience they are highly in tune with. As in improv shows, the political performers may use a technique called a callback: referencing a previous line, exchange or game that the audience is familiar with. Or performers might react to calls from an engaged audience that cheers, jeers and steers the actors as the show unfolds. The audience may also prompt an entire skit by bringing a story to the attention of influencers or politicians.
From this perspective, influence doesn’t just flow from influencers on stage and out to the audience, but also flows from the audience to the influencers. These dynamics make the right-wing media ecosystem extremely reactive. Feedback is instant, and the right “bits” get laughs and likes. Influencers — and political leaders — can quickly adapt their messaging to their audiences’ tastes, preferences and grievances, as well as to the events and trends of the day, unencumbered by the lag of traditional news media.
Actors and audiences in right-wing media also engage in transgressive, controversial or even offensive bits, as they test the boundaries of their shared tastes, expectations and — for the political performers — ideologies.
Like a lot of improv shows, these performances feel intimate and authentic. Audience members can talk to the performers after and sometimes during the show. They can also be invited “on stage” when an influencer elevates their content.
It may be just for a single scene, but there is also opportunity for lucky, savvy or persistent contributors to become part of the theater of influencers. This increases the motivation to participate, the excitement and the sense among audience members that they are truly part of the show.
‘They’re Eating the Pets’
One example of right-wing media as improv came in fall 2024 when then-candidate Donald Trump baselessly claimedfrom a debate stage that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating pets.
Prior to Trump referencing them, rumors of pet-eating had been circulating in local Springfield Facebook groups. These claims were amplified when a local neo-Nazi leader discussed the issue in a recorded town hall meeting, which circulated in apps like Telegram and Gab. Influencers who monitor these channels elevated the story, finding a new game with a novel element.
A Reddit post of a photo of a man holding a bird walking down the street was taken out of context by influencers and falsely used as “evidence” of immigrants eating pets. Memes, particularly those made by artificial intelligence, started spreading rapidly, catching the attention of politicians including Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who shared them. This raised the stakes of the improv game by tying these smaller memes to a larger political narrative about needing to stop migration at the southern border.
The improv act reached its zenith when Trump and then vice presidential candidate JD Vance elevated the claims during the week of the September debate. They presented the claims with both seriousness and a bit of a tongue-in-cheek awareness that the point of the story was not necessarily about immigrants but about the attention the narrative garnered. Vance even acknowledged the whole thing could “turn out to be false.” Veracity was not the point of this improvisation.
Then-candidate Donald Trump elevated baseless claims of immigrants eating pets, a false story that bubbled up through the right-wing media ecosystem.
Growing Body of Research
The metaphor of right-wing media as improv emerged through research, conversation and collaboration facilitated by the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, where we work.
One of us, Kate Starbird, and colleagues studied the role of political influencers in election-denying rumors after the 2020 election, finding right-wing political campaigns to be participatory efforts that were largely improvised. In related work, media researcher Anna Beers described how a “theater of influencers” on the right could be identified through their interactions with a shared audience.
Doctoral student Stephen Prochaska and colleagues built on sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s work to characterize the production of election fraud narratives in 2020 as “deep storytelling” – telling stories with strong emotional resonance – between right-wing influencers and their online audiences.
In her study of right-wing influencers, one of us, Danielle Lee Tomson, described the performative collaborationbetween influencers as kayfabe, a performance convention in professional wrestling of wrestlers agreeing on a story arc before a seemingly real wrestling match.
These studies all draw on different theories and apply different methods, but they converge on the ideas of improvisation, style and participatory audiences as integral to the success of right-wing media ecosystems.
A Persuasive Performance
In political improv, factuality is less important than the compelling nature of the performance, the actors, the big story arc and the aesthetic. The storylines can be riveting, engaging and participatory, allowing audiences to play their own role in a grand epic of American activism.
When considered this way, the persuasive power of right-wing media to everyday Americans comes into fuller focus. When there is a 24/7 chorus of collaborative internet influencers engaging their audiences directly, institutional media begins to feel too far removed and disengaged to have a comparable effect.
As a former chronic subscriber to right wing media, this analysis sucks, as Yves warned. Discrediting right wing media from a “moral high ground” position only reinforces right wing beliefs.
The right wing is very chaotic in it’s beliefs, but they’re all united by their seething hatred and disgust for the PMC “good guys”. Right wing media basically funnels righteous anger onto anything but capitalism which is why the right wing mediascape is so chaotic in it’s conclusions.
Once you leave the religion of the “free market” and realize that economic rent exists, right wing tendencies just melt away. At least that’s my story.
Spot on.
I found this piece interesting and plausible, but it can also apply to liberal messaging and audiences.
Once again, every accusation a confession. The A/B testing of n-many narratives by the alphabet agencies in their quixotic quest to justify the incoherent whims of their corporate masters comes to mind …
Yes, as in their final line: “When there is a 24/7 chorus of collaborative internet influencers “. I would re-write this and be more correct “When there is a 24/7 chorus of corporate and deep state influencers”. Between these two, who has more money, access and power?
Is this such a bad article? Obviously, the example chosen is fairly partisan and the specific analysis requires one to share the author’s priors but as a description of why alt-media has more energy and engagement, it is plausible.
I think a parallel analytical tool would be the software engineering paradigms of the cathedral and the bazaar. Are you building a crystalline monument or a rowdy ecosystem?
The Democratic message is a cathedral (with every overtone that implies) that falls down if a stone is missing and the alt-right one is a bazaar. Possibly the alt-left too but they have a habit of purity tests that puts them in cathedral or at least tin chapel territory.
I don’t know what the republican message is, if it is a cathedral, the base has disestablished itself from it. :-)
The choice of comedy theater as a means of communicating with the public is meant to denigrate it. I don’t understand why you don’t see that. It’s more delegitimation of Trump voters as marks for circuses.
Look how they chose the eating pets case, which turned out to be funny when the right as opposed to the mainstream propagated cats being scared memes. First, they chose arguable the worst example of Trump going wide of the mark (eventually videos by Haitians came out where they said cats in Haiti so this as, say a fear by paranoid cat owners, was not totally nuts). But the Dems should have been out trolling out of the gate. Instead the right took the air ought of this by making it into humor….which was not intended to and did not get anyone to take the original Trump foot in mouth seriously.
“Eating the pets” is actually an excellent example of what is left out of this analysis. It may be true that Trump opened himself up to such a meme, and that it was amplified in the right-wing echo chamber (which certainly exists). But what I noticed above all was that there was a full week of stories on Trump’s “eating the pets” comment in the mainstream media accompanied by moral panic rhetoric about immigrants being unfairly targeted. Completely ignored were the legitimate concerns about the immigrant situation; if I remember correctly even the Mayor of Springfield mentioned this as one of the main problems with the pet-eating meme – that it detracted from the actual problems that needed to be addressed. So, as is obvious to most NC readers, the “blue” echo chamber (I still refuse to call it “left wing”) simply did its own amplification job, creating its own reality. The thing is, the “blue” team controlled most of the major media outlets and was working very hard to control social media sources as well.
Ultimately, as Sam Owens states above, it’s a sheep-herding game. Right-wing demagogues and their media megaphones focus the resentment of their constituents on powerless scapegoats rather than the real culprits, and “left-wing” megaphones focus the fear of their constituents on the deplorables on the right.
In the end, the “eating the pets” furor did nothing to change votes. It was a mis-fire by Trump, but the Democrats just as loudly try to and often did drown out or create questionable stats re how immigrants created pressure on lower-income rentals (and often over-crowded them, leading to among other things higher rates of contagion, particularly for tuberculosis; IM Doc has seen this even in casual worker housing in his area), alleged negative impact on education (less than fluent kids needing more attention), sending as much of their money as possible to their home country via remittances, while a local would likely spend more in the community.
A few years ago in England, the right wing media ran stories claiming immigrants were stealing and eating swans, geese, and ducks etc., from ponds in parks. So these scare stories are simply recycled in a slightly different guise, nothing new.
It may be an attempt to denigrate, but comedy theater is also an excellent example of effective communication. Successful and witty comics are wonderfully good at cutting straight at the truth–everyone here remembers Carlin fondly, after all, and the Fool in Shakespeare’s plays was usually the only truth teller.
I think that any proper analysis of right-wing media (I don’t like that term, I prefer conservative media) would need to consider the post-2020 election debacle. Many pundits like Hannity were convinced that the election was stolen and amplified stories like the Fulton County election workers bringing in boxes of forged ballots during the counting, which turned out to have an innocent explanation.
Also, the Dominion voting machines story was prominently featured. I read a very detailed technical report from a colleague that said the machines are vulnerable to being hacked. However, “could be hacked” is not the same as “were hacked.” No proof was ever presented.
This created a kind of media frenzy, and some good people fell for the stories. Critical thinking skills were tossed aside. Careers were ruined, including Guiliani’s. Now, some folks will say he deserved it, but I think the role of the media in fanning the flames and encouraging a mob of group-thinkers shouldn’t be overlooked. Fox news had to settle out of court with Dominion. Guiliani is still having assets seized. Perhaps that all might have been avoided if a few adults with the ability to say “wait a sec, should we really be running these stories without proper sourcing and due diligence?” stepped up.
Of course, the media in general never does the right thing. Their job is to sell fear, or greed, or some emotion.
Huh? As if Democratic-sponsored story lines weren’t any more absurd and pushed at least as hard? Russiagate, where the dial was on 11 for the better part of 2 years. The extreme censorship of any criticism of the vaccines or the sainted Fauci. Remember his votive candles? The depiction of a pretty large number of the 1/6 tresspassers as some sort of threat to democracy, when they all left after their stunt, not even a manifesto? And let us not forget that the Capitol is a warren with no signs on doors, so a guard would have had to lead them to Pelosi’s ante room (and recall the ample footage of the shaman being escorted by guards through the building)? How about pro-trans dogmatism, where pointed out that teens taking puberty blockers often (or even always) renders them infertile for life?
All of those are great examples of Democrats chimping-out, but my larger point that I guess I failed to communicate is that both sides when you come down to it are primates. As a human race we’re still prone to chimping, and those of us that this blog tries to encourage to be critical thinkers are an endangered species. Thinking for yourself is a hard road, it means fewer friends.
Rare is the truly objective person, who can see past their own biases and emotions. It’s a lifelong project.
Is one side really “better” than the other? I don’t really think so.
Thanks for that. I have no friends, thus, no one to share my critical thoughts with. I talk to myself a lot.
The Dem’s hysterics being worse than the conservative media shouldn’t excuse for the conservative media’s excesses.
Someone or some side(s) have to take right decision and be responsible, otherwise it’s just a downward spiral to “witch-hunterism “
trying to be as clinically detached as possible w/this observation….
right-wing content is funnier (subjective). see the independently-created individual “trolling” of Democrats on social media. right-wing media figures express a sense of humor, often at the expense of mocking the Left. compare/contrast podcasts like Trish Regan’s and Cenk Ugyhyur’s (Cenk used to be more light-hearted >10 years ago….and Cenk is one of the abnormally engaging pundits).
right-wing content is more engaging because they only fear-monger 66% of the time versus MSNBC’s/CNN’s 99% of the time.
If George Carlin was alive today, he’d begrudgingly concede that right-wing media is funnier because they are not Puritanical ideologues like many of the pearl-clutching retards on the Left. “Retard” now having become on of the neo >7 “dirty words”.
in my opinion.
Chuck Schumer as much as said that with Enough with the memes.
Sometimes memes, funny stories and catchy tunes in videos like Eating the cats gain traction because people are sick of [family-blogging family blogger] lies and bull****.
Doom scrolling and humor scrolling can sometimes overlap!
It was fascinating how Trump’s out-of-right-field “eating the dogs” morphed into a viral ear-worm.
some impartial media studies professors need to hold a symposium for DC Democrats on how the hoi-polloi disarmed and jiu-jitsued a potentially crippling quip into a dance craze.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tdpqSfmfH4s
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_ZKvegTK6ro
Holy crap, this piece is bad. The writer, Thomson, doesn’t understand that many of the techniques she is describing aren’t limited to improv theater. They are the theater. And if we go with Augusto Boal, the great Brazilian creator of theater, what happens on stage is as real as anything else that goes on in the world.
But then, I write for the stage, among other low-paying writing pursuits. So I am now going to pull rank, groundlings.
No:
For all these reasons, we, as researchers of information ecosystems and influencer culture, find it useful to think of right-wing media as a kind of improv theater.
Santa Lucia, ora pro nobis. Researchers of information ecosystems. They would be the stupid neighbors with the binoculars in a comedy. In a dark play, they would be the non-functioning alcoholic friends.
Raising the stakes? One does it in every play. What does she think Sophocles does in Oedipus Rex when Oidipous keeps saying that he’s going to get to the source of the plague on Thebes? What does she think Hamlet is doing when he says “the play’s the thing I which we’ll catch the king”? Sheesh, this is basic stage craft.
Building audience input. What are actors supposed to do? Ignore the audience and put them to sleep? I recently saw an updated version of a comedy by Plautus with a wily slave. The wily slave was played by a tall, young actor, well built, an excellent physical comedian, who is a local favorite and great crowdpleaser. And his clothes fell off a couple of times. That certainly built audience input.
Transgressive? Talk to Antigone, out there guarding her brother’s unburied corpse.
This is one of the reasons why I also object to the use of the word kabuki for bad faith and kayfabe. Just watch some kabuki actors in action. Skill. Control. What costumes. Intention!
We live in a time that is over-media-ated. What she is trying to diagnose is the endless flow of propaganda and opinions. You know, like the fabled bottle of hot sauce in Hillary Clinton’s handbag. The news-&-opinion media are not theater.
And recently, some of us commenters as well as Lambert Strether himself pointed to Shoe0nHead’s election videos. In which “Shoe” does many things that Thomson attributes to right-wing media. It’s called being effective in this newish medium of on-line videos.
But theater? Improv? Commedia dell’arte? She wouldn’t know Arlecchino if he turned up at her door.
So we’re dealing with her genre confusion.
Acting note to Yves Smith.
In improv exercises, you don’t have to get silly. In Chicago, the byword for improv was “Yes, and…”
One must always add, building the stakes.
You could have responded to the prompt:
“I don’t know about that, Timmy. You know my grandpa Jedidiah just died.”
Then your scene partner gets to “Yes, and…”
{It used to be that death jokes were very common in Chicago improv. It may have been the Catholic influence and going to wakes from an early age. Now, though, Chicago improv, too much influenced by television and Saturday Night Live, avoids such transgressions.]
Nice touch with the “groundlings”! I was going to make that point about the “yes, and” advice. I spent 3 years in the Chicago improv circuit, actually working with Del Close and at Second City for a bit. I think Yves may not have had the best improv teachers. In some ways, being silly is frowned upon because it doesn’t allow the scene to develop. You can’t start off crazy because then there’s nowhere for you to go. The best beginnings are the most mundane.
Anywho, Right wing media has NO connection to improv. It plays much more like a kiddie clown act with the clowns being played by creepy drunk uncles. But that’s just my professional opinion.
My issues with this were that the author doesn’t seem to understand improv and – and do not tell my friends who made the Sunday Company – most improv is awful.
If we’re talking about FOX News, what makes them worse isn’t that there’s not even a pretense (outside of the marketing phrase “fair and balanced”) of doing reporting. They’ve been calling people who cross the border invaders at least since the original stories about a caravan. They were doing it back when toddlers were being assigned court dates for deportation proceedings.
But at the same time, the drug dealing criminal parents of any children should be prosecuted for abandonment. Most recently the big news was an unaccompanied two-year old with a post it note that had tons of play. She had no ID, but she was 100% no questions asked two years old in all the coverage. The girl obviously was not two. Eventually, she was IDed and of course she wasn’t two.
Yes, I was taught “Yes, and”. I could not do that.
As soon as it escalated, I would find it impossible to keep going when it got to the intended ridiculousness. I could not do the yes. I would go to an effective “No” as soon as it got implausible.
That’s really funny. A lot of people have a hard time making that leap. One of my best scenes which centered around the word ‘humidity’ involved me communicating with the floaties in my eye as they had achieved sentience. Afterwards, Del came up to me and said, “You know…humidity effects the amount and severity of those floaters in your eyes. Nice job.” So, yeah, that extra step into absurdity is kind of secret improv sauce.
Yep.
It has to be serious in a professional kind of way.
You have to regard it as an assignment that really matters not to you, but to the others (the audience in this case) but you are the only one who can do it. Like a surgeon. “Detached professionalism”. Which is why doing it as often that you eventually get bored of it, can do the trick. (Do it too often though and the magic is gone.)
p.s. examples:
1) Jerry Lewis once needed a female side-kick for a period-piece-spoof taking place in pre-Revolutionary France.
They were supposed to play an aristocratic couple the challenge being they had to speak fake French.
And he asked her “can you do it?” and she said “sure.”
2) In German 80s TV there was a famous episode for Candid Camera: Désirée Nosbusch, actress but then mainly a TV host darling was the victim. She was asked to do a live translation from Italian to German for an Italian gentleman who didn´t speak a word Italian. It was all made up. After the initial shock which she covered very well she did indeed pretend to understand and on the spot made up German fake translations.
I thought I’d see Kunstler, Denninger and Greg Hunter named in the article – whew! – that’s a relief!
Says the partisan hacks whose party thought portraying JD Vance as a couch-[family blog]er was funny.
I’m so old I remember when it was the liberals who used to be funny and conservative attempts to emulate them fell flat. Now it’s largely the other way around, with the “liberals” being clueless, humorless scolds. Like Kate Starbird.
Starbird should have stuck to basketball. She was actually good at that. This “disinformation” research gig she has now (does pro basketball qualify one for that job by the way?), not so much. You’re average jock isn’t usually a MENSA candidate though ( present company smart NC jocks excepted).
Credit where credit is due – at least she tried using the improv schtick instead of a tired sports metaphor, which would have been the easy route for her.
I almost forgot to add this – enjoy, Kate Starbird!
this…making my day…animals, large & small on my place
needy of laughter most days…the ‘pets’ hereabouts can usually be counted on to do so
….this…sehr lächerlich!
The Blue Blob in Demworld essentially practices what Blake called “priestcraft” — the ludic impulse is their kryptonite, so I am unsurprised to find them engaging in this sort of denunciation wrapped up in pseudo-academic mummery.
Yes – this is resonance with the cathedral point I was making. Top down is losing to bottom up because it simply isn’t agile enough and, as ever, it is claiming that winning through low overhead emergent cooperation rather than high ceremony planning cycles is somehow cheating or low sportsmanship.
The Improv Theater approach includes all media. Main line media is owned by a few conglomerates whose main purpose is revenue. Btw, that also applies to so-called “influencers”. I refuse to ever listen to Josh Rogan, for example. Or, Bill Maher, whose HBO show has made him very rich. So, in the end, the schtick boils down to money, not so much ideology. All the irate comments above seem to miss that point.
That there seems to be little public outrage about the Palestinian genocide speaks volumes. The NYT, for instance, doesn’t cover the atrocities from the perspective of investigative journalism. Instead, it offered an in-depth “investigative piece”, based on an Israeli woman who tried to sell a bag of goods, for money, of course, about the purported rape by Hamas of Israeli Jewish women, a fact disproven by other legitimate news outlets. Yet, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborugh and his sidekick Mika Brzezinski keep shouting and repeating the canard, still. Equally egregious is the charge that college and university students who participate in campus protests against the Palestinian killings, call for a cease fire and divestment from genocidal machine Israel.
As for right leaning media, anyone who’s watched WH press briefings and Fox Cable “reporter” Peter Doocy, ask questions, is all you need to know. Doocy’s aim is to create theater. The outrage should be directed at the lack of FCC regulations or enforcement of fair reporting – the FCC Fairness Doctrine was abolished in 1987 under Reagan ( reflect on that).
“The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.”
Russia hacked the Vermont electrical grid; Russia hacked Pokémon Go; Russia hacked sex toys; Russia didn’t just contaminate our Precious Bodily Fluids, they invaded our very cells, as The NY Times ominously reported; Manafort met with Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy…
And the author accuses right-wing media of “raising the stakes… where the plot intensifies and expands,” a la improv?
The #McResistance was always blind to the ways its hectoring and sanctimonious tone undermined its message, while the Right has been more nimble, befitting the energy and momentum it has on its side.
Indeed, one comes away thinking that the overall complaint is not so much the improv, but that they fail to read from the script.
That’s a great analogy. The idea that there may not be a script (not just improv, but rl) must be incomprehensible to them.
I think a related issue is the many pictures I have seen of Trump as being muscled, heroic, athletically flat bellied, and attractive. I don’t remember ever seeing this type of phenomenon related to an American political leader in my decades of experience. Exceptions would be reported from the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and other foreign cultures. Included in this would be Trump’s pose after being shot at while being protected by secret service agents willing to take a bullet for him. Also included in this may be the performance of MSNBC during the past year and before. I wonder if the real issue is the news media, or is it the viewers of the news, or is it both.
Whenever someone says “foreign cultures”, the first two things that comes to mind are Nazi Germany and Soviet Union. That’s why Putin can only be Hitler, or Stalin. Also, Trump is Hitler, and Kamala is a Communist. /s
P.S. Nazi estetics come from Ancient Rome (the salute, marching with banners, etc), and other cultures (like the infamous sign). Muscled, heroic, athletically flat bellied, and attractive estetics come from US superhero subculture, which was inspired by oldschool circus strongmen (that wore underwear on the outside for some reason).
I was only around 9 or 10 at the time, but I definitely remember “Ronbo,” a slew of illustrations and pics with Reagan’s face on Sylvester Stallone’s classic ‘Rambo’ pose. Perhaps it started out as satire, and then conservatives appropriated it as their own.
Speaking about US-style improv, here’s an old viral video from Improv Everywhere Youtube channel that fits nicely in the whole US political scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJjEcVl6PqY
Most of us are familiar with how the label “conspiracy theory” has been weaponized to short-circuit all inquiry into controversial issues by “educated” and “knowledgeable” PMC types. I’ve been noticing that the phrase “just asking questions,” always placed in scare quotes, has been used more and more for the same purpose, as it is here. As with “CT,” the effect is to short-circuit *legitimate* questions that have not been satisfactorily answered by authorities by lumping them in with the type of trolling described by the authors of this piece.
I’ve also noticed that for researchers who work at places with names like the “Center for an Informed Public” at major universities, only those with the right credentials can ask the right questions and pose the right theories. If only we would listen to their expertise maybe we wouldn’t be so susceptible to all the “influencers” who want to confuse us.
Another way of viewing this article would be that artistic conservatives, having been locked out of mainstream artistic outlets by the pervasive left ideology that permeates Hollywood, theater, and traditional media, are finding new outlets for their art. Art, like life, finds a way.
OT/idioms – “shooting a mouse with an elephant gun”
The German equivalent would most likely be “shooting sparrows with cannons”.
As sparrows are also prominent in: “rather a sparrow in your hand than a pigeon on your roof” (= aim fo realistic goals, kiddo), sparrows have a special place in our Germanian hearts. Which is sort of interesting pro-underdog-think considering the countless mighty (and some overweight) eagles in German national coats of arms.
Coat of arms of Germany:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Germany
p.s. oh and of course: to use an “elephant gun” most likely is a British habit. Germans had elephant-inhabitated colonies (?) only very late which apparently didn’t suffice to make it into linguistical use.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the left-wing and right-wing are both correct, but only when criticizing each other. True wokeness comes from realizing that they both suck.
Those stilettos, good god (see improv video wih Keegan&Kelly above).
Actually I would find it funny if the normal dudes, the two teachers, were the stars of the show, while K&K be the teachers and dressed accordingly.
Keegan-Michael Key has a decent 2-season comedy-drama-series on Netflix “Friends from College”.
And there is an indie movie about a troupe of improv stand-ups that breaks up when one of them (Key) gets a deal with a major network.
“Don’t Think Twice” (2016)
The niceties exchanged there are taken from real life. The professional community of comedians is shark-infested territory. They stab each other constantly. Hatred and jealousy part of the routine. Which I assume is another reason why totalitarian alignment with anti-Trump dumbness is so wide-spread. If you don´t stick to the ideology you are out. And that makes for rather bad “comedy” (I am not up to date on how Key and Co. have handeled the current situation.)
p.s. re: pumps (stilettos) – compare the physics of him and her both doing the same…
SWING TIME (’36): “Pick Yourself Up”
2 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06RlwN0nddQ
I’ve noticed the silliness in the right wing media–it’s there because it is, at this time, mainly populist in sentiment and the average person is not persuaded by reason and logic. However, the fake “left” represented by the Democratic Party in all its guises imagines itself to be persuaded by reason and logic but is even more tribal and unreasonable than the most people on the so-called far-right (which means, to them, anyone opposed to the Ukraine War). I’ll take “silly” over the hypocrisy, nihilism, and authoritarian/totalitarian monsters on the “left” in their fanatical attachment to war and repression at home and abroad through their nearly slavish devotion to the CIA and its partners.
Kate Starbird, one of the main authors of this report, was the former head of CISA’s misinformation/disinfomation advisory committee in 2021. This committee made formal censorship advisory proposals for Dept. of Homeland Security review. She has led video seminars on how to censor emerging narratives on the internet which DHS/CIA/NSA find objectionable. See the work of Mike Benz for all of the gory details about Starboard, CISA, and the Department of Homeland Security.
And the star of the top seeded Stanford basketball team that got knocked out by a 16th seed (ironically, Harvard) in round 1 of NCAA tournament. I was at the Jr U at that time and remember it well.